Projects: Skills, Suits, and Power Suites

A couple days back, somewhere in the midst of my scrambling to finish writing, I found time to work out a problem that’s been plaguing me for some time now — and that’s what to do with the “suits” for the game I’m developing. You know, that game. The roleplaying game with cards and a board. Kind of a customizable card game, kind of a board game, kind of a roleplaying game.

I’ve been going back and forth over how to incorporate the skill system I devised into the cards, and I had this idea for designing suits that focused around different combinations of skills. Of course, I didn’t really have a concept for how to arrange or group the skills, or any set theme. I played around with using different archetypes as a basis for suits, and I played around with the idea of creating more than four suits.

What I came back to, though, was this idea that I want the game to be simple and straightforward, that you can play without buying all the pieces and accessories, and not only is it playable, but you can still be competitive without all the pieces. Let’s say you download the rules for the roleplaying game off my website, you print out one of my free boards, and you want to play the game.

You should be good to go with a standard deck of 52 playing cards … aces, 2s, 8s, 10s, Jacks, Kings, Queens, four suits … it should be that easy to get started. The game has to be simple, customizable, and capable of being played without buying any of the fancy parts. And why is that? Because if you need fancy tools to play a game, it isn’t as convenient, and it’s more difficult to actually play. Find players? Hah!

Anyway, I think I figured out how to make my suits work, and I’ll talk about them, and the skills themselves, over the next couple weeks. There are a bunch of skills, and they all fit into a handful of suits. With some interesting overlap.